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Pakistani constabulary soldiers on Thursday prepared to pray for 15 executed colleagues.
The soldiers were kidnapped Dec. 23 after dozens of Taliban insurgents overran a fort in one of the restive tribal regions straddling the border with
Afghanistan. Officials said they had tried but failed to secure the captives’ release.
The executions followed the death of a high-ranking Taliban commander on Sunday and came just days after local news media reported that several factions of the Taliban had vowed not to attack the Pakistani military.
The bullet-ridden bodies of the soldiers, members of the Frontier Constabulary, were spotted by local tribesmen on Thursday morning after they were dumped in Mir Ali, a subdistrict in the North Waziristan tribal region. The Frontier Constabulary, run by the Pakistani police authorities, has about 70,000 paramilitary soldiers who operate checkpoints in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province and provide security at foreign embassies and consulates in major cities across Pakistan.
“From the look of it, it seems they had been shot dead early Thursday morning,” said a senior security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “We have been trying to get them freed,” the official said, “and we have had contact with their captors. And until last night the indications that we had were very, very positive. God knows what happened afterwards.”
Farther south, armed men in the city of Quetta kidnapped a British doctor who worked for the International Committee of the Red Cross on Thursday, said Sitara Jabeen, a spokeswoman for the aid group. She said she knew of no motive for the abduction, which took place near his home.
The executions in northwestern Pakistan were claimed by a Taliban spokesman, Ihsanullah Ihsan, who described them as an “act of revenge” for the killing of militants in the Khyber tribal region on Sunday. He said the group would release a video of the killings “soon” and threatened more attacks.
A dozen militants, including Qari Kamran, a local Taliban commander, were killed in the Khyber tribal region on Sunday after security forces attacked a militant hide-out. Mr. Kamran was considered a high-ranking Taliban commander who oversaw terrorist attacks and activities in Khyber and his native Nowshera district in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
Security officials said they had expected retaliatory attacks because Mr. Kamran’s killing was considered a major success.
Last week, reports emerged that Afghan Taliban and leaders of Al Qaeda had urged Pakistani Taliban militants to put aside their internal differences and focus on attacking the American-led forces inside Afghanistan.
There have also been reports of negotiations on ending violence between Pakistan’s government and some Taliban factions, although military officials deny the existence of such talks.
The executions show that, despite a recent decrease in militant-related violence and suicide attacks, some Taliban militants are unwilling to end their attacks, analysts here said. A report released recently by an Islamabad-based research organization, the
Pak Institute for Peace Studies, stated that militant-related violence had decreased by 24 percent in the last two years.
“The Taliban are not to be believed because past deals have shown that they end up violating their own peace deals with the government and use them to regroup and regain strength,” said Omar R. Quraishi, an editor of The Express Tribune, a Karachi-based English-language newspaper. He said the executions also highlighted differences among Taliban factions, because some groups seemed to support ending the fighting against Pakistani security forces, while others continued with attacks.
Salman Masood reported from Islamabad, and Ismail Khan from Peshawar, Pakistan.
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